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Lawyers as SEC enforcement targets, what a fund manager needs to know

In a move that should place securities lawyers and their clients on notice, Commissioner Kara Stein of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) recently indicated that lawyers may become targets of SEC enforcement actions when a registrant has been poorly advised by its attorney and the result of that advice ends up harming investors or violating regulatory standards. The SEC has the ability to sanction, fine and bar attorneys and accountants from practicing before the SEC pursuant to SEC Rules of Practice 102(e). As a practical matter, a bar pursuant to Rule102(e) precludes an attorney or an accountant from representing a regulated entity, such as an investment adviser or broker dealer, in any further dealings with the SEC or otherwise.

Several years ago, before he retired, I asked Gene Gohlke, then the acting head of the SEC’s Office of Compliance, Inspections and Examinations, why it was that the SEC brought Rule 102(e) proceedings against accountants, but rarely against attorneys. “Lawyers are different,” was the answer I received. And that has been the approach of the SEC for quite some time, only bringing proceedings to bar attorneys in the most obvious and egregious cases. My question to Mr. Gohlke was prompted by what I saw as questionable legal advice from certain “boutique” law firms that were providing not just aggressive advice, but simply incorrect advice. You may recall that before the relatively recent Mayer Brown no-action letter, hedge fund managers were being advised that they could hire third party marketers that were not registered as broker dealers through “solicitation agreements” pursuant to Rule 206(4)-3 under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. This position, which was advocated by every former real estate or anti-trust lawyer turned hedge fund lawyer, was flatly wrong, but generally embraced by fund managers. When the SEC finally caught on that some fund managers were hiring unregistered broker dealers, Bob Plaze, then associate director of the Division of Investment Management of the SEC, somewhat famously quipped that if fund managers had been interpreting the Dana letter to allow such activity, they had been interpreting it wrong.

Additionally, in his recent speech, David Blass put fund managers on notice that they have been misinterpreting the scope of the “issuer’s exemption,” Rule 3a4-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Fund managers are now on notice that they need to either hire third party brokers, or pay their internal employees based on something other than the amount of capital raised on behalf of the fund. This also grew out of a misunderstanding of that rule by the aggressive and misinformed section of the securities bar. There are many other examples, such as relying on the “issuer’s exemption” when the fund is organized as a unit trust, rather than a partnership or exempted company (don’t do it), misinterpretation of what constitutes permissible use of soft dollars within the safe harbor Section 28(e), operation of the custody rule, execution of short sales, and many more. When the SEC finds deficiencies in a fund management organization, it is typically the fund manager that suffers the consequences, not the attorney that advised the fund management company.

But with the SEC now identifying attorneys as key “gatekeepers,” all of that could change. Commissioner Stein is “troubled greatly” by enforcement cases where the lawyers that gave advice on the transaction and prepared and reviewed disclosures that were relied upon by investors are not held accountable. The Commissioner identified that when lawyers do provide bad advice, or effectively serve to assist fraud, their involvement is used as a shield against liability, both for themselves and for others. The problem has been surfaced by the SEC, now we will see how and against whom enforcement action is taken in order to make an example for the industry.

What does this mean for fund managers? First, fund managers need to recognize that “forum shopping” is dangerous. You can always find a lawyer somewhere that is complacent, desperate, or unethical enough to tell the fund manager whatever they want to hear. This is a short term folly and can only lead to a bad result in the longer term. Second, the market has changed substantially since the heady days of 2002-2007. It is no longer just the overworked and understaffed regulators with which fund managers need to concern themselves. Investor sophistication in the due diligence area has increased substantially and now endowments, family offices and ultra-high net worth investors want to understand that the fund manager has made good decisions with respect to their service providers and has not opted for a low-end option that the fund manager can dominate and control. Particularly for start-up fund managers that have essentially one shot at executing on a successful offering, the choice of an administrator that has no FATCA solution, or a lawyer that is unknown or not respected, can kill the offering before it ever gets started. As attorneys, we recognize that competition in the asset management business is fierce and raising assets has rarely been more difficult; however, this is a business that is built on trust and confidence. Fund managers need to demonstrate with every decision they make; they are motivated by the best interests of their investing clients.

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